Susie Bright reads Thurber's version of a "The Night Before Christmas," in the Hemingway Manner

The legendary James Thurber wrote the parody, "A Visit from Saint Nicholas in the Ernest Hemingway Manner" for the Christmas Eve edition of The New Yorker magazine in 1927. The poem's inventor, Clement C. Moore, will never be the same.

there is well researched doubt as to whether Moore actually wrote the original poem, but there is no doubt that Santa Claus as we know him is an amalgam of corporate shill, consumer candyman, and psychedelic shaman. coke is it !

I listened to it. Twice I listened to it. I like it, I thought. Especially the narrator’s laconic and non-explanatory “Yep” response to his wife’s sarcastic query.

Funny, though… I don’t recall Thurber being in the habit of dropping F-bombs, and I doubt that a widely-read magazine such as “The New Yorker” would have printed an expletive like that in 1927. Is there a copy of the original online somewhere? Are you sure he didn’t use an ersatz swear, like “flipping,” or something?

Far too many dialogue attributions to be a Hemingway … I remember in more than one work having to pencil in character initials in long exchanges; one of them had over 20 without any “he said” “she said” after the first two.